Not So Light Lenten Reflections
Week 5
Daniel and All the Trusts
Daniel has always been my favorite book in the Bible. Yes, I do love Psalms and Acts, but Daniel usually comes out on the top of my list. Sandwiched between the major prophets and the minor prophets, I've jokingly called Daniel the middling prophet, a concise twelve chapters, the last six heavily into prophetic visions, the first six more biographical. It's the first six I want to talk about today. It's in those early chapters that Daniel models the ability to live faithfully following God in a culture that would seem to be at odds with anyone attempting to live a godly life. Trust in God is woven in and out of those chapters, all the trusts – pet trusts, trust for a mouth, and the BIG Trust.
Daniel is one of several young men taken into captivity during the Babylonian exile. The best and the brightest of the Hebrew youth were to be trained in the Babylonian culture. Daniel and three of his friends decide to go through this on God's terms and not be dictated to by the surrounding culture. When presented with the king's food, a rich diet of meat and wine, not in keeping with the dietary laws of the Hebrew people, Daniel asks if they instead could be given vegetables and water to eat and drink. He suggests a ten day trial eating period and at the end of that time, Daniel and his three friends appear fatter and healthier that those youth who ate the king's food. They would be allowed to continue eating in a way that would be honoring to God. I speculate as to whether he had “settled in his mind not to meditate beforehand” and trusted God for the words to negotiate the new diet. It took a certain amount of trust to step out and suggest what Daniel did, as well as trusting God to give him “a mouth and wisdom” to hammer out the deal.
When King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream and challenges his wise men to tell him the dream and then interpret it, they fail and the king decides to kill all the wise men, Daniel and his friends being included in the group. Daniel, speaking with “prudence and discretion,” asks to speak with the king. When the king asks him if he can make known the dream and its interpretation, Daniel replies,
No wise men, enchanters, magicians or astrologers can show the king the mystery that the king has asked, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries and he has made know to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.
Daniel sidesteps his own ideas about the king's dream and relies solely on God to give him “a mouth and wisdom” to interpret it and acknowledges as much to Nebuchadnezzar. A lot of trust there. Nebuchadnezzar pays homage to God as a result, but as impressed as he is with Daniel and Daniel's God, Neb is a slow learner...a very slow learner. It doesn't take him long to make a golden image that he commands every one must worship or be throw into a fiery furnace. Daniel himself is missing from this little drama, but his three friends refuse to bow in worship to the golden image and find themselves on the way to the incinerator. When questioned about their obstinance, they replied,
O, Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.
What a great picture of the three friends grappling with the BIG Trust. In the face of almost certain death, they acknowledge that they trust in a God who may save them...or may not. Either way, their God is worthy of their trust, their BIG Trust. He not only saves the three friends from the fiery furnace, but He allows Nebuchadnezzar himself to see their salvation and to see a mysterious fourth companion in the furnace, someone whose appearance “is like a son of the gods.” This causes the king to have another moment of worship of the God of the three friends.
Nebuchadnezzar has another dream, and Daniel, again, is the only one who can interpret it. While the king's first dream was about the future of his kingdom, this dream is about the king's personal future. Daniel “was dismayed for awhile, and his thoughts alarmed him.” Again, Daniel had trusted God for the interpretation, but now he had to trust God for the delivery of the interpretation. How do you tell the king that he is going to “be driven from among men”...” to eat grass like an ox” because of his pride? Nebuchadnezzar receives the interpretation, it comes to pass, and when God restores the king, he praises and extols the King of heaven...one...more...time.
After Nebuchadnezzar's death, his son has a baffling experience. Words appear on the wall during a banquet. Daniel again is called to interpret their meaning. He is promised to be clothed in purple, to have a chain of gold around his neck and be the third ruler of the kingdom. Daniel delivers the interpretation, God's judgment against the new king and a prediction of his imminent death. Despite the dire warning, the king immediate bestows on Daniel what he has promised. That very night, the new king is killed.
Now at this point in Daniel's story he seems to have collected some pet trusts. One could say that surviving and thriving in exile in the Babylonian culture has become a pet trust bordering on a superpower. Daniel found favor in altering the food menu for he and his friends. He had saved himself and his friends by trusting God to use him to know and interpret Nebuchadnezzar's first dream. He somehow completely missed getting throw into the fiery furnace. He successfully delivered an unpleasant interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's second dream. A more disturbing interpretation to Neb's son gave him robes of royalty, gold and a powerful position. I can't pretend to know how Daniel felt about these events, but it would appear that his trusting of God blessed him in exile time and again. But the BIG Trust was waiting for him around the corner.
Daniel's success in Babylon was not without its critics. Because Daniel “became distinguished above all”, his enemies were jealous and sought a way to destroy him. Because “no error or fault was found in him,” they knew that to bring him down would somehow have to involve a “connection with the law of his God.” Through some legal wrangling, an irrevocable law was put into effect that stated only the king, Darius, could be worshiped. The penalty for breaking the law was to be thrown into the lions' den. Daniel, of course, did what he had always done, getting down on his knees three times a day, praying and giving thanks before the God he trusted, much to Darius' dismay. Powerless to change the law, Darius, seeing Daniel off to the lions' den, can only say, “May your God, whom you serve continually deliver you!” Of course, God does. After spending a sleepless night, Darius hurries to see Daniel's fate the next morning. Daniel is alive and well and in one piece much to the king's relief. God had sent his angel and shut the lions' mouth. The scripture continues,
So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.
“...because he had trusted in his God...”
We all have our fiery furnaces, our lions' dens experiences, possibly not as dramatic or as deadly as in the Book of Daniel, but just as challenging. Can we build on the trust we have experienced in the little things to learn to lean upon God in the big things? Can we trust in God to give us a mouth and wisdom, to show us how to step aside and let God have His way with us? We can look at Daniel and see him as a model for a life of trust so when we have come through our fiery furnace or out of our lion's den, it will be seen that we trusted in our God.